3.30.2006

The Killshot: the End of Industry Dinosaurs
>

26 years ago Walter Alvarez and colleagues at UC-Berkeley proposed the (then) far-fetched idea that a killshot (or two) had wiped out the dinosaurs. I recall reading about it in Astronomy magazine, sitting in the lanai, while a gecko 'barked' and walked across the ceiling, a kind of nanosaur. The thesis, that there was satellite evidence of an impact crater off the Yucatan and possibly, traces of irridium in the proper strata of the earth's crust was advanced.

Today, the dinosaurs of industry are similarly exposed to killshots from nano-startups, what we termed a couple of years ago as nanoglobals. Why is this?

1. Mobility of labor. Innovators are everywhere. (When I post this, it will be read by people in Eastern Europe, Asia, and India, almost immediately.)
2. Cost of development/barriers to entry. The costs are very low, while the demand for cleverness and innovation is high. This will lead to a great many innovative high-quality products that may be able to compete head-to-head or bypass antecedents
3. Mental Barriers. Without the baggage and constraints on thinking common to any bureaucracy, nanoglobals won't say "We've always done it that way." Instead, they'll just do something else entirely and most people will know about it after the fact.
4. Thriftiness. Nanoglobals adapt virtual network structures from the beginning. As a result they can compete imediately on a price/cost basis and do without the 'burn rate' phenomenon which puts a fixed time frame on a company's existence.

3.29.2006

With the Brain, Size Doesn't Matter: Scientists
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According to NIH-researchers who are publishing a new study, brain size is not correlated with IQ, as has been advanced in other studies and often implied by science fiction writers. Rather, agility matters.

London - Intelligence may have more to do with how the brain develops during adolescence than its overall size, researchers said on Wednesday.

Using magnetic resonance imaging, scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland have shown that the brains of children with high IQs show a distinct pattern of development.

The cortex, or outer mantle of the brain, starts out thinner and thickens more rapidly in very intelligent children. It peaks around 11 or 12 years old before thinning rapidly in the late teens.

"We found that the cortex showed a different pattern of development," Philip Shaw, lead author of the research published in the journal Nature, said in an interview.

Children with average IQs had a thicker cortex to start with and peaked earlier before gradual thinning began.

Shaw added that the changes were subtle and what is driving them is a mystery. Why children have a thicker or thinner cortex initially is also not known.

"Brainy children are not cleverer solely by virtue of having more or less grey matter at any one age," said Judith Rapoport, a co-author of the study.

"Rather IQ is related to the dynamics of cortex maturation," she added in a statement.

The scientists discovered the association between intelligence and brain development by taking MRI scans of 307 healthy children and teenagers, aged 5-19, over 2-year intervals as they grew up.

They compared the scans to see how they related to the children's IQ. Very intelligent youngsters had scores of 121-145 while high IQs were between 109-120 and average between 83-108.

The smartest youngsters showed the highest rate of change in the scans. The scientists believe the longer thickening time in the very brainy children might indicate a longer period for the development of high-level cognitive circuits in the brain.

The researchers added that the thinning phase could involve a "use it or lose it" pruning, or killing off, of brain cells and their connections as the brain matures and becomes more efficient.

"That might be happening more efficiently in the most intelligent children," said Shaw. "People with very agile minds tend to have a very agile cortex."

Get Data  on Cognitive Testing, Your Genes, and Finding Out. Wired Talks About Your DNA in the April, 2006 issue.

Scientists Think Like Kids, Too
>

So is the reverse of the last post also true. Hey, its probably true.

The writer Gene Wolfe wrote three stories:

The Dr. of Death Island. The Death of Dr. Island and the Island of Dr. Death so it is possible for things to go backwards and forwards at the same time.

MIT Study Shows Kids Think Like Scientists
>


Children as young as preschoolers approach the world much like scientists: They are convinced that perplexing and unpredictable events can be explained, according to an MIT brain researcher's study appearing in April.

The way kids play and explore suggests that children believe cause-and-effect relationships in the world are governed by fundamental laws rather than by mysterious forces, said Laura E. Schulz, assistant professor of cognitive science and co-author of the study "God Does Not Play Dice: Causal Determinism and Preschoolers' Causal Inferences."

"It's important to understand that kids are approaching the world with deep assumptions that affect their actions and their explanations and shape what they're able to learn next," Schulz said. "Kids' fundamental beliefs affect their learning. Their theoretical framework affects their understanding of evidence, just as it does for scientists."

While previous research had suggested that children do not accept the idea that physical events occur spontaneously, Schulz took that concept one step farther: Would young children accept the idea that physical causes might only work some of the time?

Schulz and colleague Jessica Sommerville of the University of Washington tested 144 preschoolers to look at whether children believe that causes always produce effects. If a child believes causes produce effects deterministically, then whenever causes appear to work only some of the time, children should think some necessary cause is missing or an inhibitory cause is present.

In one study, the experimenters showed children that a switch made a toy with a metal ring light up. Half the children saw the switch work all the time; half saw that the switch only lit the ring toy some of the time. The experimenters also showed the children that removing the ring stopped the toy from lighting up. The experimenters kept the switch, gave the toy to the children and asked the children to stop the toy from lighting up.

If the switch always worked, children removed the ring. If the switch only worked some of the time, children could have removed the ring but they didn't--they assumed that the experimenter had some additional sneaky way of stopping the effect. Children did something completely new: they picked up an object that had been hidden in the experimenter's hand (a squeezable keychain flashlight) and used that to try to stop the toy. That is, the children didn't just accept that the switch might work only some of the time. They looked for an explanation.

Schulz said she believes this is the first study that looks at how probabilistic evidence affects children's reasoning about unobserved causes. The researchers found that children are conservative about unobserved causes (they don't always think mysterious things are happening) but would rather accept unobserved causes than accept that things happen at random.

"We sometimes think that preschoolers are very concrete and work just with what they see," said Schulz, but this research suggests that preschoolers actually have quite abstract beliefs about causal relationships. "Four-year-olds have more sophisticated reasoning than adults tend to give them credit for," she said.

Test your own reaction to a choice, and inhibition test using lights

3.28.2006

Loneliness Can Raise Blood Pressure
>

Loneliness is a major risk factor in increasing blood pressure in older
Americans, and could increase the risk of death from stroke and heart disease, new research at the University of Chicago shows. Scholars found that lonely people have blood pressure readings that are as much as 30 points higher than in non-lonely people, even when other factors such as depressive symptoms or perceived stress are taken into account.

3.27.2006

NeuroChips in the Making
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The living-machine interface....will it become reality? Think organic computers or biomechanical prosthetics for the brain that could expand cognitive ability. Ker Than at Livescience reports on another interesting development in neuroscience...

The line between living organisms and machines has just become a whole lot blurrier. European researchers have developed "neuro-chips" in which living brain cells and silicon circuits are coupled together.

The achievement could one day enable the creation of sophisticated neural prostheses to treat neurological disorders or the development of organic computers that crunch numbers using living neurons.

To create the neuro-chip, researchers squeezed more than 16,000 electronic transistors and hundreds of capacitors onto a silicon chip just 1 millimeter square in size.

They used special proteins found in the brain to glue brain cells, called neurons, onto the chip. However, the proteins acted as more than just a simple adhesive.

"They also provided the link between ionic channels of the neurons and semiconductor material in a way that neural electrical signals could be passed to the silicon chip," said study team member Stefano Vassanelli from the University of Padua in Italy.

Read more at LiveScience.com

Exercise your brain in less time
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Try this new sequence from neurogamer . Excercise your brain - try to do the same number of reps in less time.

3.26.2006

Exercising Three Times a Day Could Reduce ADD
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Scientists at Cleveland Clinic and Johns Hopkins Discuss Non-Medicative Alternatives for ADD/ADHD

The interesting fact in the excerpt from USA Today below is the high percentage of use, the other interesting observation is the substitution of exercise for the drugs and achieving similar results without the chemical intervention....

... About 4 million Americans take stimulant medications for ADHD, including nearly 10% of 10-year-old boys, says Steven Nissen of the Cleveland Clinic.

Nissen and other members of a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel were concerned enough about the drugs' safety last month that they suggested adding a "black box" warning about possible heart risks. Last week, another advisory panel recommended adding label information about the risk of hallucinations. The FDA has not yet acted on those recommendations.

Doctors haven't done many definitive studies about exercise and ADHD, says David Goodman, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. But Goodman says it makes sense that working out would help people cope with the condition. Studies show that exercise increases levels of two key brain chemicals — dopamine and norepinephrine — that help people focus.

"Your cognitive function is probably better for one to three hours after exercise," Goodman says. "The difficulty is that by the next day, the effect has worn off."

If kids could exercise strenuously three to five times a day, they might not need medications at all, says John Ratey, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Ratey is so intrigued by the question that he's writing a book about how exercise can reduce symptoms of ADHD or at least help patients cope.

> New FOCUS and Reaction Time Trainer: Get a faster brain

3.24.2006

8x8 chance of life
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Seth Shostak gives a play by play of the 8 candidates that could have life. There are eight reasons why there might be life. 8x8 = 64 and the $64 dollar question is whether it exists anywhere outside earth.

Home Base for Cognitive Labs
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Here's our new home plate page, which talks a little about APOEe4 and testing. Straight scientific talk about our programs.

Get the Toolbar for the Global Brain
>

We have not really pushed it, but now is a good time to download the cognitivelabs.com toolbar you can get at SF-based Alexa. It's a good thing to do. Why? It blocks pop-ups, it also allows you to see which sites are getting more or less popular-the 'reality web' if you will. Also, we would like to do some interesting things with the Alexa web crawl. For example, we could find out how fast the web is, how fast the web-operators are, and also how fast they are by location. That last one also involves a mapping ap. To do all this, you need a user base that can make it worthwhile. Luckily we have that. There it is the global brain (or an externally rendered facsimile thereof).

3.23.2006

New Ten Second Drill: See if Speed is in you
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What can you do in 10 seconds? This new exercise will make you work hard to recognize patters and see changes. Act Fast. Submit Your High Score to everybody.

Aricept Effective in New Study
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Drug Appears Effective for Severe Alzheimer's Cases
03.23.06, 12:00 AM ET

THURSDAY, March 23 (CogLabs Newswire) -- Aricept, which is typically used to treat mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's disease, seems to reverse some cognitive and functional deterioration in patients with severe forms of the disease, Swedish researchers report.

The potential benefit of Aricept (donepezil) to treat Alzheimer's patients with severe dementia had not been studied until now. Some 20 percent of Alzheimer's patients suffer from severe dementia; as the disease progresses, they become less able to communicate, less mobile, and increasingly reliant on nursing care.

In the trial, a research team led by Dr. Bengt Winblad, director of the Karolinska Institute's neurology department, assigned 248 Alzheimer's patients living in nursing homes to receive donepezil or a placebo for six months...

>> read more at Forbes

are you a mogul?

play the Tech Mogul
game.

Simple Game for Complex Times
>

Stay clear and focused.

A free game for attention-building where you earn points based on speed. Post on delicious if you've got a bookmarking toolbar. If not, there's a link.

3.22.2006

Rubik's Cube: multiple skins: tag it!
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An open-source version of Rubik's cube.

Memory Loss and Your Genes: From the Dawn of Time Forward
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Your genes play a surprisingly important role in determining your risk factors for memory loss. If we go way back into the mists of time, the branching out of the human species from Africa has much to do with likelihood of memory loss. Overall, the most common genetic type is APOEe3, common among people living around the Mediterranean and their ancestors. Another type, APOEe2 is widely distributed among all populations on earth, but is absent in Native Americans. A third type. APOEe4, also has spread throughout the world in all groups but is slightly more common among Aborigines, Lapps, New Guineans, and Native Americans.

While Memory Loss and Alzheimer's can affect people regardless of their genetic type depending on their age and lifestyle behaviors, APOEe4 has been noted by researchers for its greater than average link to Coronary Artery Disease and Alzheimer's Disease. Individuals with the homogenous zygote of APOEe4 represent a substantial percentage of the population around the world and in the U.S. According to researchers, APOEe4 individuals are at greater risk for early memory loss and Alzheimer's, with the disease often going undetected in the brain for decades.

Interestingly, people taking the tests from cognitivelabs.com get first-hand access to some of the technologies used in Stanford research studies of individuals at risk for Alzheimer's Disease.

sources:


Apolipoprotein E (APOE) allele distribution in the world. Is APOE*4 a 'thrifty' allele?

The Genographic Project, a global five-year study collecting DNA from 100,000 indigenous peoples spanning five continents by some of the world's top population geneticists and other leading experts who are aiming to map the history of human migration via DNA, invites all members of the public to take part. It aims at tracing the genetic lineage of various human populations on the planet - to put it simply, to establish the degree of kinship between the modern peoples. The $40 million privately funded initiative is a collaboration between National Geographic magazine, IBM, and the Waitt Family Foundation charity.

History Since the Last Ice Age

MIT Perspectives on Molecular Evolution

Slower Speed-of-Processing Is Associated with Presence of the Apolipoprotein ε4 Allele - Topic: Clinical assessment - Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

Institute of Aging, New York City: APOE Catalyst Conference - presentation by J. Wesson Ashford, M.D.,Stanford/VA Alzheimer's Center, Stanford, CA

3.21.2006

It's all over. Javascript vs. Flash
>

The final count was 49 votes for Javascript and 37 Flash! Thanks for voting.

Javascript pulls ahead, 26-24! vote!
>

Java script pulls ahead. You can still vote.

Deadlocked!
>

Javascript vs. Flash: deadlocked at 18-18. Break the impasse!

The cognitivelabs.com growth chart
>

We thought we'd break new ground by showing the actual growth rate of the site, which is moving in the right direction and is growing as fast as the redwoods in the backyard with all the rain we've had.



Now public companies have to report everything thanks to S-O (as they should) but small private companies don't really need to. So, here you go. Take a look. Everywhere you go, people around this great land and all around the world are taking tests. Thanks.

Flash leads Javascript, 10-8. Still time to vote.
>

Flash leads Javascript, 10-8. We'll keep it open. Answer the survey here.

Columbia Collects $200 million for brain research
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NEW YORK - Columbia University announced Monday that it has received a record $200 million from the widow of a distinguished graduate and will use the money to build a research center devoted to the study of the brain.

The donation from Dawn Greene and the Jerome L. Greene Foundation is the biggest gift ever received by the Ivy League university.

The Jerome L. Greene Science Center will study such disorders as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, autism, dementia and schizophrenia. It will be led by neurobiologist Thomas Jessell and Nobel laureates Richard Axel and Eric Kandel.

Free Brain Speed Test - Cognitive Speed is Linked to Longevity

3.20.2006

Rumor Spreads that Warren Buffet is a lizard
>

What if it were true?




So now you know. Quality content for inquiring minds

But we still don't get to see him do the robot, like the commercial says.

You can check your brain's speed while you're here. It could actually be relevant for driving. Or, play a game. Thanks

Javascript vs. Flash
>

Now that the term AJAX is all around us, and no it does not refer to a Homeric or Aenaedic hero or a British dreadnought (HMS Ajax) but basically can be translated as "javascript works". (This definition from paulgraham.com via reddit): so what does that mean for rest of us in day to day parlance?

In looking at casual games around here, our most popular in terms of page views is the 'techmogul reaction game' (javascript) which is very surprising since it is one-D game; it outdoes Flash. Now, the scientific exercises are mostly in Flash (though can be created jscript now); Memory TV is Flash and a variant of a photo viewer; the new pictures with reaction time will also be in Flash but can have a similar duality.

Flash in the Lead 10-8. We'll keep it open today....
Statement: Javascript tops Flash: Yes or No

  

Kids with Tourette's Syndrome Have More Control
>

In a startling finding, children with Tourette's Syndrome, often linked to non-social behavior or loss of control, are found to have above normal cognitive control. In fact, the powers of concentration of individuals with this syndrome or mild versions are exceptional and as a result they can become talented musicians, philologists, mathematicians, or coders.

more:

Though the repetitive vocal and motor tics characteristic of Tourette's syndrome may suggest an inability to control involuntary actions at the cognitive level, researchers have now found evidence that young people with Tourette's syndrome actually exhibit a greater level of cognitive control over their movements than their non-affected peers do. The research findings are consistent with a greater need for cognitive control of actions in individuals with Tourette's syndrome, and they offer clues to which regions of the brain may be involved in the generation of the syndrome's characteristic behavioral tics.

The findings are reported by Dr. Georgina Jackson and colleagues at the University of Nottingham, UK in the March 21st issue of Current Biology.

Tourette's syndrome is a developmental disorder that typically occurs during late childhood and is characterized by the presence of chronic vocal and motor tics. Tics are involuntary, repetitive, highly stereotyped behaviors that occur with a limited duration, typically occur many times during a single day, and occur on most days. Motor tics can be simple or complex in appearance, ranging from simple repetitive movements to coordinated action sequences. Verbal tics may involve repeating words or utterances (palilalia), producing inappropriate or obscene utterances (coprolalia), or the repetition of another's words (echolalia). Understanding the psychological processes and neural mechanisms that give rise to the execution of tics is of considerable clinical importance. A widely held view is that the inability to suppress unwanted movements in Tourette's syndrome results from a failure of cognitive control mechanisms.

In the new work, Dr. Jackson and colleagues studied cognitive control mechanisms in a group of young people with Tourette's syndrome (TS) by assessing the performance of individuals on a goal-oriented eye-movement task. The task demanded high levels of voluntary control and the active inhibition of automatic eye movements. The researchers found that in performing the task, TS individuals are not in fact impaired in cognitive control. Instead, the study showed that, paradoxically, TS individuals make fewer error responses than their age-matched and neurologically normal peers do, while responding just as fast to the task's demands. According to the authors, this finding most likely reflects a compensatory change in TS individuals whereby the chronic suppression of tics results in a generalized suppression of reflexive behavior in favor of increased cognitive control.

kudos to host
>

When this site got dugg unexpectedly, I am pleased to say that our host performed perfectly and did not have a single fluttering screen - quite impressive.

Diggwatcher.
>

We just started diggwatcher - a blog that shows you what's number one on digg. Here's the XML feed for your readers....
combined with interesting observations. Also, look for neurogamer, another new site.

Here is the Diggwatcher URL.

3.19.2006

Your Brain: Three Things to Start Doing Today
>

The need for activities that can build cognitive focus throughout aging is clear, as a recent study showed that as pilots age, the frequency of crashes goes up.

Staying alert and attentive and maintaining the ability to focus is what we should all strive to achieve.

Three ways that this can be achieved are:

1. regular cognitive exercise (start here)

2. increase physical exercise

3. optimize your diet with 3 categories of items: green tea, blueberries, and fish

3.18.2006

Inspired by Google Mars
>



An exciting new development this week. Ever since looking at Mars through a small telescope, the red planet has held a fascination....

Google Mars open for business. Virtually inspect the red planet. Play a Mars theme game after you get there. Or try the Mars Puzzle need IE. After Mars, blast your way through the Asteroid Belt....

Google Maps Mars
By BetaNews Staff, BetaNews
Not content with sticking to Earth and the moon, Google is bringing its mapping technology to our nearest planetary neighbor: Mars. In commemoration of Percival Lowell's birthday, Google joined up with NASA to build Google Mars using the most scientific maps of the planet.

"Explore the red planet in three different ways: an elevation map shows color-coded peaks and valleys, a visible-imagery map shows what your eyes would actually see, and an infrared-imagery map shows the detail your eyes would miss," said Google Earth developer Chikai Ohazama. "We hope you enjoy your trip to Mars."

3.17.2006

1200 plays
>

This has 1,200 plays today so far. Try it before the day's out. It's just getting dark in CA.

ExtraSolar Life: Cognitive Evolution?
>




One clue at the center is the evolution of the brain, perhaps best depicted through the encephalization quotient (EQ) postulated by Lori Marino of the SETI Institute. The EQ is simply the ratio of body mass to cranial capacity. For the dinosaurs, this ratio was far below 1.0 - since their masses were exponentially larger than their cranial cavity. In such individuals, intelligence as we understand it does not exist.

On earth, EQ has tended to increase for some species and flatline or decrease in others. Reptiles, for example, have become no more intelligent. On the other hand, mammals including both apes/hominids and cetaceans have demonstrated adaptability and increasing EQ. Marino shows that environment does not limit the advance in EQ necessary for complex behavior, since some dolphins and whales have EQ's approaching those of modern humans: 5.0 for example where humans are 7.0.

The implication is that intelligence can evolve in surpisingly different environments, though perhaps the basic building blocks do not vary much: carbon, water, complex organic molecules.

Thinking about recent developments on Enceladus, it may be that there are numerous microclimates around the universe (even in this solar system) that share common traits with certain aspects of microclimates on earth - the basic building blocks are present and a range of temperature exists enabling life and sustained reproduction. The fact that two life forms on earth are so similiar yet evolved along a different path so as to be apparently unrelated suggests that life can exist in greater profusion and proximity to earth than could have been imagined. It would seem intelligence and cognitive evolution are closely related, wherever life exists.

A Test, for the Love of St. Patrick
>

Good luck, for the love of St. Patrick. A special reaction time test. Once you succeed at this you'll be standing right by the blarney stone.

3.16.2006

An Early Indicator of Alzheimer's Identified
>


amyloid proteins

A University of Minnesota team has identified what could be the earliest indication of Alzheimer's, a discovery that may help to diagnose the disease and perhaps stop it progressing.

Researchers believe that some people show signs of memory loss years before they develop Alzheimer's. But they are not sure what causes these problems, or how they turn into full-blown dementia.

To find out, Karen Ashe at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and her team studied a strain of mice that, like people, develop mild memory problems in middle age before getting more severe Alzheimer's symptoms. The suspicion is that renegade proteins, known as amyloids, accumulate and begin to cause issues...

>> Take action against amyloids in this javascript game from cognitivelabs

>> or, read more

Anyone For Tennis: Challenge Deep Blue
>

Anyone for Tennis? Now you can challenge Deep Blue. It's on the Right.

Put Your Game on cognitivelabs.com
>



We offer all of our users both casual mind games plus scientifically-based cognitive tests so they can check and monitor their memory; which are executed with a casual game interface. These tests have been used in numerous published studies, presented at International Scientific Conferences (2005-Alzheimer's Association, Washington DC; 2005 Stockholm Sweden; 2005-E3 with halo gamers; plus additional publications in 2006 will be announced shortly). The tests are effective at identifying people who are at risk for cognitive impairment OR who just want to check their cognitive speed and perception.

If your game or idea works for us - we'll feature your game and give you very fair terms. Just contact us at developer (AT) cognitivelabs.com. Our focused team consists of social and computer scientists as well as top-flight neuropsychological researchers with publication credits including New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, and Numerous top tier Peer-reviewed research journals.

3.15.2006

Indiana Jones Returns
>



Via Yahoo! Movies a millisecond ago:

Looks like Harrison Ford can finally take the fedora out of mothballs.

[ games: pharaoh's tomb | indiana jones ]
[ puzzle: temple of ramses at abu simbel]
[ puzzle: tutankhamun ]
[ puzzle: nefertiti ]

---Egyptians believed the mind was based in the heart (ib)

The Hollywood megastar told a German magazine on Wednesday that after rewrites too numerous to count, he and director Steven Spielberg are finally satisfied with the script for the forever-in-the-works fourth installment of the whip-wielding, tomb-raiding adventurer...read more

Free Web Service Adoption Curve
>



Free Web Service Adoption Curve

According to the Santa Fe Institute and Stanford researchers, what gets ahead, stays ahead.

If we take the number of visitors (v) to a site and divide that by the number that actually sign up for (s) something, which may also be mapped into quadrants of increasing heat, you can calculate the effectiveness of an application in developing a user base. v/s = adoption rate (ar). How steep this slope is speaks volumes.

The frontier of this population can be expressed as a function f(potential audience(pa) x (ar)). Therefore, if there exists a property with a known quantity pa where ar is also known (usually this is another property) it is possible to estimate the future audience.

If the model is to be advertising, known CTR and CPMs are divided by the estimated size of the future audience, multiplied by the estimated lifetime value of the customer, which is determined based on products available today and in the pipeline, more credit is given for patents, defensible technologies (e.g., a sandbag bunker position) and actual code than for conjecture and hope.

Both parties benefit when the slope for the larger property is also increased or shored up vis-a-vis the steeper slope of the smaller.

Another Threat to the Brain: Lou Gehrig's Disease
>

New York (CogLabs NewsWire)

30% of Patients with Lou Gehrig's Disease Perform Poorly on Cognitive Tests, and 25% affected with Cognitive Impairment May Be Diagnosed with Dementia.

In a study of 40 patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), about one-third showed evidence of cognitive impairment, but these deficits did not appear to be related to survival, according to a study in the March issue of Archives of Neurology.

ALS, commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig disease, is a progressive disorder characterized by the loss of muscle function and the atrophy (wasting away) of muscle tissue. ALS is primarily a disorder involving the motor neurons, which control muscles and movement in the body, but new evidence suggests it also may have an impact on cognition (thinking, learning and memory), according to background information in the article. Previous research has estimated that anywhere from 2 to 52 percent of patients with ALS also experience cognitive impairment.

Gregory A. Rippon, M.D., M.S., and colleagues at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, analyzed 40 consecutive patients with ALS who were evaluated at neurologists' offices between August 1991 and August 1992. Participants underwent examinations and testing to gauge their cognitive functioning and verify the diagnosis and history of their disease, including whether symptoms were first detected in muscles of the throat, jaw, tongue or face (bulbar onset) or those in the arms (limb onset). The researchers selected a control group of 80 individuals without ALS, matched to the ALS patients by age, gender and education, from a series of patients referred to a memory disorder clinic from 1992 to 2003.

Of the 40 patients with ALS, 12 (30 percent) showed evidence of cognitive impairment, including nine (23 percent) who met criteria for dementia. There were no significant differences between ALS patients who had dementia and those who did not in terms of age, sex, education, site of onset, memory loss, emotional stability, severity of the disease or family history. ALS patients and control participants had similar results on cognitive tests, although patients with more severe ALS showed a decline in verbal skills beyond what would be associated with motor difficulties affecting speech muscles. Survival data from public and medical records were available in January 2004 for 38 of 40 patients with ALS, who lived an average of 3.4 years after testing. Cognitive impairment and dementia did not appear to be associated with survival.

"In conclusion, using a conventional test battery, 30 percent of a consecutive series of patients with ALS demonstrated cognitive impairment, and nearly a quarter qualified for a neuropsychologic diagnosis of dementia," the authors write. "Free recall, executive function and naming were most impaired in ALS patients with dementia." Future studies using testing and diagnostic criteria specific to frontotemporal lobar dementia, the type believed to be associated with ALS and other motor neuron diseases, may find that the percentage of ALS patients with cognitive impairment or dementia is even higher, they conclude.

Stanford Researchers look for Alzheimer's subjects
>



Stanford Researchers Dr. Jerome Yesavage and Dr. Wes Ashford are looking for subjects for a study on early Alzheimer's Disease. Here is more information on the study from the Stanford news service. You can also register online here and the information will be directed to the researchers directly through the form.

Kick-Ups - Game for the Morning (Pacific)
>

Game of the Day: Kick-Ups: Stay Focused and Click on the Ball!

3.14.2006

King Tut puzzle
>

On the Egypt theme. King Tut puzzle.

Social technologies interfere with free-throws
>

Chalk up one for the old blues. Cal students use social software to disrupt USC players free throws in Pac-10 tournament.

here' the berkeley campus puzzle (IE only - for now) definitely version .1 but it's a start

Web 2.0 - Web 1.0 on Botox - Yes or No?
>




The response was unanimous. However, the reponse size militates against drawing any dramatic conclusions. Certainly something more than "fascinating" is occurring.

Can NanoTech Repair Brain Damage?
>




Rodents blinded by brain damage (and possibly one day humans) had their vision partially restored within weeks after being treated with nanotechnology developed by bioengineers and neuroscientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The findings provide evidence that similar strategies might someday work in humans.

"If we can reconnect parts of the brain that were disconnected by stroke, then we may be able to restore speech to an individual who is able to understand what is said but has lost the ability to speak," study co-author Rutledge G. Ellis-Behnke, research scientist in MIT's department of brain and cognitive sciences, said in a prepared statement.

This method uses an extremely tiny biodegradable scaffold that provides brain cells with a place to re-grow -- like a vine on a trellis -- in the damaged area of the brain. This is the first study to use nanotechnology to repair and heal the brain and restore function in a damaged brain region. The approach may one day help treat stroke patients and people with spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries.


The findings will appear online this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Deals Fly Off the Bat Before You Hear the Crack
>

The New York Times talks about the Internet - our advice to anyone contemplating a deal with a highly verticalized portal is you better do it quick.

Digging Up the World's Oldest Ships
>


pyramidion of King (not queen) Hatshepsut - with a mention of Punt. "Queen" Hatshepsut was actually King

Digging Up he World's Oldest Ships.

By training I happen to have studied Egyptian Archaeology and Languages - along with computers - that's why the discovery of a 4,000 year old ship garage is so exciting. Some of the oldest ships before were the funerary boats of the pharaoh Khufu (Cheops by Herodotus)which you can see if you get permission.

What's interesting is that a few heiroglyhic texts speek of voyages to the land of Punt, where according to the inscriptions "all kinds of wonderful things were brought back which delighted his majesty's heart" in fact this is one of the texts they let students translate along with such things as the Eloquent Peasant and the Voyage of Sinuhe. Some of the wonderful things are listed: ebony, frankincense, myrhh, pygmies, etc. However, no evidence for wood or timbers was found corroborating the story, which is one of the world's oldest written travel stories in the Conde Nast Traveller mode. Now it seems that Excavations at an ancient Egyptian shipyard have unearthed remains of the world's oldest seafaring ships.

The 4,000-year-old timbers were found alongside equally ancient cargo boxes, anchors, coils of rope and other naval materials just as old, at what archaeologists are calling a kind of ancient military administration site. The timbers were probably cedar of lebanon, which the Egyptians highly valued for their larger craft mainly because they were tall enought to produce a beam in one piece.

The massive complex, made up of six manmade caves, is located at Wadi Gawasis, a small desert bluff on the Red Sea near the modern city of Port Safaga. According to Cheryl Ward, Florida State University archaeologist and part of the excavation team, the age of the finds is remarkable.

Just as crucial, however, is what the find says about ancient Egypt's naval capacity.

According to Ward, it was widely thought that while ancient Egyptians often traveled along the Nile in smaller river boats, they did not have the technological ability to voyage long distances. Evidence at Wadi Gawasis seems to suggest that they were, in fact, prolific sea-goers like later civilizations in Greece and Rome.

Specifically, hieroglyphs inscribed on some of the cargo boxes indicate that many came from a single origin: the almost mythical city of Punt, whose exact location is still unknown but is thought to lie nearly 1,000 miles away in the southern reaches of the Red Sea.

"Egyptians obviously went to sea frequently during this time, despite the fact that it was a huge undertaking. It required several thousand people trekking supplies across the desert," Ward said.

Before setting out to sea, Egyptians needed to transfer shipping materials, tools, and goods from the main cities along the Nile to the shore, where they were assembled. The caves, measuring 60 to 70 feet on average, were likely created specifically for the task, Ward theorizes.

"You can compare these caves to airport hangars, more than anything else. If all the planes were flown out of the hangars, what would be left over? Parts, tools, bits and pieces; it's the same here," she said. "We also found that the Egyptians had recycled a lot of ship parts and reused them architecturally within."

Timber remains at Wadi Gawasis demonstrate that when ships returned from several months at sea, they were disassembled in the caves and parts inspected for wear and tear. Those pieces that were too badly worn by the burrowing of shipworms were discarded, while those in better shape were kept for later voyages.


The mere presence of shipworm damage, accrued usually during voyages of at least several months, suggests that ancient Egyptians actually spent a lot of time at sea.

"Egyptians even sailed to Lebanon to gather cedar for building their ships," Ward said. "The resin in this wood was thought to prevent damage, but it obviously didn't work very well."

Test Your Sight-Brain Interface
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How Fast can You see? There are good reasons for testing your eye dexterity and working to improve it: 1) gaming 2) driving 3) reflexes 4) overall brain speed

Check it Now

3.13.2006

Memory TV: Hail Caesar
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On Memory TV:



Living by the Sword, Dying By the Sword: The furtive-looking Phllip the Arab:
he lasted just 5 years


Swords and Sandals - Hail Caesar.

From Alexander the Great to Julian the Apostate, a look at the Meditteranean's top autocrats, including such figures as Caligula and Claudius (immortalized by Robert Graves and the teleplay I, Claudius) Commodus, Didius Julianus, who bought the throne in an Ebay-style auction, the big-spending Septimius Severus, the weird Elagabalus, and Julian.

Click here, then launch memoryTV, pick Alexander and Caesar, and there you go. This visual tour takes you through 700 years of ancient history (skipping 280 years, gratuitously between Alexander and Caesar, but no matter) Just let the pics load on your desktop, don't do anything else; repetition is normal - you get two chances to name the emperor or guess the emperor - there is no legend. The portrait itself will usually give it away.

Monday Notes
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Gawker Media's Kotaku picked up a former post. Cool

3.12.2006

Space Tourism Not a Dream
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This is worth some discussion. Who would be willing to make a financial commitment and more importantly, put a deposit toward a trip? Virgin Galactic has been collecting information from prospective purchasers, such as their willingness to spend $200,000 on their personal flight, possibly as a way of engineering the financing of the project and of the company. One more thing, you will really need a cognitive test before going out there into the wild blue yonder with the right stuff.

How realistic, in your opinion, is this?

Start: Will our grandchildren spend their vacations on the moon, or their honeymoons in a hotel orbiting Mars? A few dreamers at the International Tourism Fair say space tours for average travelers could come sooner than we think.

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are rumored to have booked tickets on Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic Spaceship which is due for lift-off in 2010. But experts at the ITB in Berlin said space travel may also one day be within reach for mere mortals.

"If you have 20 million dollars lying around, there is a spot available in April next year," Dieter Isakeit of the manned flight division of the European Space Agency said, noting the still astronomical cost for amateur astronauts.

US millionaire Dennis Tito laid down that amount in 2001 to become the first galactic tourist, spending a week on the International Space Station (ISS).

But few are able to pay such princely sums to realize their dream -- a Japanese man became only the fourth holidaymaker in space last September.

But more modest -- and radically cheaper -- trips could become available in the foreseeable future.

Professor Robert Goehlich of Keio University in Yokohama, Japan said that short suborbital flights, which would make it possible to experience a few weightless minutes, could be a reality within 15 years.

Flights that take passengers into spatial orbit for a few hours could be a niche market in 25 years, he added.

However the next step, a true holiday in space, is a more distant fantasy, not only for financial reasons.

A model space hotel on display in Berlin shows that comfort when travelers are afloat in the Milky Way will be hard to find.

The module, designed for use on the ISS, is comprised of four tiny cabins with berths for couples, a common room and a very basic bathroom.

Its developer, Dirk Schumann, said the package could be had at a price of two million dollars per person per week.

The other concern is safety.

"The Achilles' heel of the shuttles today is that they do not allow the crew to be ejected in case of major damage," German astronaut Ulf Merbold said.

"The space station is not like a plane in which the cockpit is separate from the passengers' cabin. It is as if people in a hospital could walk in and out of the operating room during a heart operation," Isakeit added.

And it will also take some time before Mars and Saturn start appearing as destinations in tour catalogues. The length of the journey is so prohibitive that it would take new propulsion technology to make manned travel to the major planets even a remote possibility.

But for those too impatient to wait, there are options.

The travel group European Space Tourist is offering four-day trips to the Cosmonaut Training Center at Star City east of Moscow with zero-gravity simulation flights. The experience can be yours for just 5,000 euros (6,000 dollars).

"The demand is growing all the time," proprietor Thomas Kraus said, saying that companies seeking a unique gift were particularly intrigued.

Certain inconveniences associated with space, however, will probably never improve.

The rest, "sounds good on the menu but on the plate it has a gelatinous consistency that is much less appetizing," Goehlich said.

"This artificial colony on the space station is incredibly lacking compared to the quality of life on earth," Merbold said.

"There are much more comfortable places than a shuttle to spend a honeymoon" or hold a wedding. "You cannot kiss the bride with a space-suit helmet on."

3.10.2006

Mental Typewriter and Game Controller Becomes a Reality
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'Mental typewriter' controlled by thought alone
Fascinating report: (NewScientist) A computer controlled by the power of thought alone has been demonstrated at CEBIT in Germany. As we have speculated here, rapid advances in cybernetics are now ocurring, which will eventually change how consumers interface with computers, while the substructure of how people inter-relate online has continued to evolve quickly. Imagine reaction time that is constrained only by the power and speed of thought without any mechanical components. It would seem we are headed towards an always-connected global brain. With complete integration of components, what is the difference between telepathy and let's say, a WiFi/Bluetooth connection between your computer and your brain, with the computer/device acting as a filter and transceiver?

The device could provide a way for paralysed patients to operate computers, or for amputees to operate electronically controlled artificial limbs. But it also has non-medical applications, such as in the computer games and entertainment industries.

The Berlin Brain-Computer Interface (BBCI) – dubbed the "mental typewriter" – was created by researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute in Berlin and Charité, the medical school of Berlin Humboldt University in Germany. It was shown off at the CeBit electronics fair in Hanover, Germany.

The machine makes it possible to type messages onto a computer screen by mentally controlling the movement of a cursor. A user must wear a cap containing electrodes that measure electrical activity inside the brain, known as an electroencephalogram (EEG) signal, and imagine moving their left or right arm in order to manoeuvre the cursor around.

"It's a very strange sensation," says Gabriel Curio at Charité. "And you can understand from the crowds watching that the potential is huge."

Learning algorithms
Curio says users can operate the device just 20 minutes after going through 150 cursor moves in their minds. This is because the device rapidly learns to recognise activity in the area of a person's motor cortex, the area of the brain associated with movement. "The trick is the machine-learning algorithms developed at the Fraunhofer Institute," Curio says.

John Chapin, an expert in using implanted electrodes to control computers, agrees EEG sensing technology is advancing rapidly. "There's been a lot of progress on the non-invasive side in recent years," he said.

The German researchers hope to develop a commercial version of the device as an aid for paralysed patients and amputees.

Chapin adds that brain-computer interfaces could have a range of uses beyond the medical. "Signals from the brain give you a fraction of a second advantage," he says. The device could make a novel game controller and be used in other ways. The researchers have even begun testing the machine as a driving aid, as it can sense a sudden reaction and control a vehicle's brakes before even the driver can.

The next stage is to develop a cap that does not have to be attached directly to the scalp. This should make the device easier to use and cause less skin irritation for the wearer.

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VC Reaction Time Game - Straw or Gold?
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Oh, why not have some more fun while on the cognitive treadmill. Forbes recently put out their annual 'midas list' and we have put out the VC Reaction Time Game. Which is more creative? you be the judge.

Tech Mogul Reaction Time Test
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It's time for a little humor...you'll see if you play this game.

What was the History of Pong?
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Here is the history of PONG - FYI

What was the First Video Game? It's Not What you Think
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What was the first video game?

Answer is here

Test your memory here

Engineering in the Future
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Talent, techniques, advanced tools key to future engineering success

Social Technologies at the Forefront

"In anticipating the future, we must recognize that civilization is on the brink of a new industrial world order," IEEE Fellow Dr. Joseph Bordogna said during his keynote address at the IEEE-USA Leadership Workshop in St. Louis. "Success will not be garnered by those who simply make commodities faster and cheaper than the competition.

They will be those who develop talent, techniques and tools so advanced that competitive capability can be continually robust." Bordogna is a former deputy director (1999-2005) and chief operating officer of the National Science Foundation, and served as IEEE president in 1998. His address, "Round, Flat or Spiky, the World Turns on an Axis," provided his vision on how engineers can contribute to future innovation in a world undergoing swift and constant technological transformation.

"Engineers will have to be effective collaborators, innovators, risk takers, and communicators, working across shifting boundaries, and embracing diversity," Bordogna said. "They will need to know the human and social dimensions of technology. Our social and economic progress depends upon it. All of you carry the excitement and the responsibility to make it happen."

Bordogna, now the Alfred Fitler Moore Professor of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, added that "creative transformation" -- the process of converting energy to momentum -- is the flip side of "creative destruction":

"That process -- energy to momentum -- which engineers certainly embrace, speaks directly to the excitement and inspiration of integrative 21st century science and engineering innovation at the frontier. Propelled by advances in genomics, materials, computer-communications, and advances in cognition, mathematics and social science, our profession is on the verge of new, exhilarating frontiers."

Test Center

3.09.2006

Believing You Can Save Your Memory is the First Step to Achieving It
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Waltham, MA - Believing that you can retain a good memory even in your twilight years is the first step to achieving that goal. Those who believe they can control their memory are more likely to employ mnemonic strategies that help keep memory fit despite the march of time. These are the conclusions of a new Brandeis study published in the Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences.

The study demonstrates a link between actual cognitive functioning and a low sense of control, and examines whether the relationship between control beliefs and memory performance varies for young, middle-aged, and older adults and whether using mnemonic strategies influences memory performance.

"One's sense of control is both a precursor and a consequence of age-related losses in memory," says lead author Margie Lachman, professor of psychology and director of the Lifespan Lab at Brandeis University. "Our study shows that the more you believe there are things you can do to remember information, the more likely you will be to use effort and adaptive strategies and to allocate resources effectively, and the less you will worry about forgetting."

Funded by the National Institute on Aging, the study involved 335 adults, ages 21 to 83, who were asked to recall a list of 30 categorizable words, such as types of fruit and flowers. Middle-aged and older adults who perceived greater control over cognitive functioning were more likely to categorize the words and had better recall performance, Lachman notes.

"It's no surprise that age-related losses or lapses in memory can challenge our deeply embedded sense of control," says Lachman. "Thus, we find an increase with age in beliefs that memory declines are an inevitable, irreversible, and uncontrollable part of the aging process. These beliefs are detrimental because they are associated with distress, anxiety, and giving up without expending the effort or strategies needed to support memory."

In fact, even young people have problems with memory performance, though they typically chalk it up to distraction or other external factors. In contrast, older adults are more likely to judge their forgetfulness an inevitable fact of aging or even a warning sign of Alzheimer's disease, leading to anxiety and despair.

Those who don't use adaptive strategies for remembering often have the expectation that there is nothing they can do to improve memory. The study's results suggest that interventions that target conceptions of control over memory could be effective for improving strategy use and enhancing memory in middle and later adulthood.

3.08.2006

Hunter Gatherer Advantage: Fighting Obesity and Dementia
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find out now


Take a sufficiently long walk. Regardless of your mental state at the outset,
dopamine receptors in the brain are activated by elevated levels of serotonin
accompanying your exercise.

You feel better and even exultant. The desire to elevate serotonin through carbohydrate consumption drops.

On the other hand, if you don't exercise, you must boost serotonin through food, caffeine, or other substances.

In the brain, sedentary behavior manifests itself through reduced blood flow and less capillary action. Reduction of blood flow can lead, some scientists believe to conditions where amyloid tangles can begin to accumulate, which might otherwise have been removed or slowed through fluid pressure. The result is a greater likelihood of dementia.

Looking at lifestyle of modern society and the rise in Alzheimer's Disease - since it was not formally recognized until the turn of the last century, after the industrial revolution, do you think there could be a connection? Combine a hunter gatherer or agrarian worker lifestyle with consumption of anti-oxidant substances such as berries and curcumin and you have the body and nutritional inputs balanced.

The advantage of modern existence is that it has removed the stresses which caused premature death such as lack of public health/epidemics, injuries from hunting (quite common) and heavy work, exposure to extremes of cold, and famine.

However, it has also brought sedentariness and its risks to longevity in the form of Alzheimer's. The best strategy may be combining the simple wisdom of the prehistoric peoples with advantages of the modern. What the web makes possible with regard to the brain is the ability to measure based on a consistent standard worldwide, an early warning system if you will, and therefore, the plausibility of another revolution in public health and longevity...

find out now

3.07.2006

Awesome board meetings, refueled, remixed and reloaded
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Just wrapped up 2 days of board meetings. They are a lot of fun. Particularly when you have a plan and you are hellbent on executing against that plan and are doing it. You can see the future morphing into the present in the language as they say, of strategic intent.

Hotmail co-inventor strikes again
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This piece is by way of FT.com by their Mumbai correspondent...boiling the ocean, one sea at a time. Almost everybody has or had a hotmail account before it became too irritating to use.

Inventor of Hotmail turns his attention to weblogs
By Khozem Merchant in Mumbai
Published: March 6 2006 10:23 | Last updated: March 6 2006 10:23

Sabeer Bhatia, the Bangalore student who with a colleague invented the iconic Hotmail e-mail service and went on to make a fortune by selling it to Microsoft, is returning to fix what he describes as a "neglected stepchild."

Mr Bhatia, now a serial technology-entrepreneur, will on Monday unveil his first attempt to "enhance the Hotmail experience" since selling for $400m his stake in the company he founded in Silicon Valley a decade ago.

Mr Bhatia will be in India to announce the global launch of blogeverywhere.com. Users of the website will be able to download a toolbar that allows them to write and publish their own blogs, while also giving Hotmail users faster access to their messages.

Blogeverywhere’s toolbar will download unread e-mail messages and store them in a local cache while a first message is being read. Users will then be able to access unread messages from their computer’s own memory instead of having to retrieve them from the internet.

Mr Bhatia believes the technology will cut down the lag time internet-based e-mail users experience in developing markets such as India where high-speed internet access is not widely available for the country’s estimated 250m online users.

Mr Bhatia has invested $5m from his personal fortune to develop blogeverywhere over the past two years. The idea was initially conceived by Shiraz Kanga, an Indian former software developer with Cisco Systems.

Mr Bhatia’s new venture is his first since investing $8m of his own money – along with $7m raised from financial backers – in Arzoo, a virtual classroom of free-lance academics and computer specialists who answer questions on IT problems encountered at home, or in a large workplace. That venture, however, ultimately flopped as a business.

Mr Bhatia is not alone among US-based IT entrepreneurs and venture capitalists in turning his attention to India and bringing funds to develop ideas in a country seen as one of the largest potential online markets after the US and China.

Pramod Haque of US-based funds Norwest Venture Partners and Vinod Khosla of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers are among the investors supporting Indian technology ventures.

Mr Bhatia will also on Monday launch an internet telephony service similar to Skype. He says he is in talks with four Indian telecoms companies that could enable PC users anywhere in the world to call a land line, or mobile number in India for Rs1 (US$0.02)

What is White Matter Disease?
>


Scientists are raising the alarm on a new form of cognitive impairment that is not Alzheimer's Disease.

The condition is known as white matter disease. Here is a reference from GE Healthcare BioSciences Europe

Unlike Alzheimer's, which progressively erodes memory, white matter disease gradually robs a person of the ability to make decisions, on everything from looking after finances and organizing one's day to choosing what to wear and what to eat for supper.

Lesions affecting the white matter of the brain appear to be preventable by taking simple steps - and the earlier in life one starts, the better.

"It's very much related to risk factors that are controllable," a scientist said. "It's important to know your blood pressure and have it under control when you're in your 30s and 40s (so) that you're going to have a better life when you're in your 60s and 70s."

The lesions in effect, strangle the brain by reducing capillary blood flow, and have been detected with a procedure known as DTI, more sensitive than MRI, which does not usually show the attentuation of white matter disease adequately. It appears that medications and substances used to treat or prevent cognitive impairment also show promise. Add this to the threat of cognitive impairment caused by Alzheimer's, and you have potentially hundreds of millions of people impacted. In the US alone, 77 million people are concerned with memory loss, however, the US makes up only 4% of the world's population.

3.06.2006

You people are freakin' incredible
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You people are freakin' incredible! one million visitors today. (Just kidding) but still, our collective hat (and hair) is off.

Not too late to take a no-hassle free test approved for science-content by Dr. Evil or would you prefer this?

simon before bed
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Try this game before the end of the evening.....get to 10, then turn in.

Now known as simply the cognitive labs blog
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Now renamed.

3.05.2006

what some people say.... and DNA implanting
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just saw the film aeon flux with Charlize Theron, no choice really as it ran right on the inflight screen. What happens to a society where cloning has become an accepted coping strategy and means to life extension, where there is a keeper of DNA who recycles the DNA upon the instant of morbidity by immediately inputting an individual's DNA into a new candidate? As a result, there are no new people....visualization and speed are key themes - like brain speed and Tracking; here are some user comments on the relevant sight-speed test [measures your ability to track an object L - R and R - L in addition to brain speed].
----
diamond -1 points 11 days ago
Cool! I scored 172.5 ms, which I assume is good because the listed average is 351 ms.

borland 1 point 11 days ago
168.5 for me... all those years of playing quake weren't entirely useless it seems :-)

krid 1 point 10 days ago
-1, it wants my email address

bustlinSlug 1 point 10 days ago
149.1 for me.

UC-Irvine Researchers Identify Substance that Can Block Alzheimer's
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Irvine, Calif. -- Researchers at UC Irvine have found that a new compound not only relieves the cognitive symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, but also reduces the two types of brain lesions that are hallmarks of this devastating disease, thereby blocking its progression.

In a study with genetically modified mice, a team of UCI researchers led by Frank LaFerla, professor of neurobiology and behavior, found that a compound known as AF267B, developed by paper co-author Abraham Fisher of the Israel Institute for Biological Research, reduced both plaque lesions and tangles in brain regions associated with learning and memory. Although drugs exist on the market today to treat the symptoms of Alzheimer's, AF267B represents the first disease-modifying compound, meaning it appears to affect the underlying cause and reduces the two signature lesions, plaques and tangles.

3.03.2006

matrix in ascii
>


if you like minimalist retro-technical stuff, you'll like this courtesy of digg.

Simon in Full Screen
>

The classic Simon as rendered by Paul Neave. How many colors can you remember? Test your memory.

Get Involved in Fighting Dementia Early
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How younger people can get involved in fighting Alzheimer's, it's not just something for the baby boom generation.

Here's one college freshman's take.

Googling TV: Entering the Age of Inverted Pyramids and Relevant Memories
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Here is an interesting fact: when we ran some text ads for our service about a year ago after TV coverage of our test, an interesting thing happened.

response rate dropped

That told us that people were more interested in something if it wasn't on TV. As a case in point, look at the Winter Olympics, which I've read was the worst performing broadcast in the history of Olympic coverage. That's partly why we started the simple memoryTV service - to give you a chance to see the images and content you are interested in that means something.

Here's what you are saying you want to see:


You can try it here
, plus a sample on the home page...



3.02.2006

Get a Free CD Loaded with Tests and Games?
>

It's true - just go here.

Will Cosmic Rays Prevent Human SpaceFlight?
>

Scientists have identified one of the key challenges facing humans going into space in the next few decades. The danger is invisible and deadly.

The threat is: cosmic rays.

On a journey of more than a few days, the impact on the human body can be projected and it is not attractive.

Dying Inside

For example, after only a few days in open space, minute nanoscale cosmic rays begin to affect your DNA and the body's ability to regenerate. Rapid aging, cellular breakdown, and cognitive impairment on a rapid timescale is possible. And all is not safe on other worlds: on a planet with a skimpy atmosphere, like Mars, the protection afforded will be minimal. Therefore, humans will need to live either underground or undersea.

OR

Mission theorists have come up with some possible solutions. For interplanetary or interstellar trips, the capsule will need to be centrally submerged in a globe of fluid - either water or C2H4. Water has an advantage because it can be used hydroponically; however, the extra weight makes earth-takeoff impossible, more likely the water would be ionized from component gases.

Another solution is charging the entire craft with a positive charge of 2 billion volts, which will create an umbrella or envelope around the craft and mimic the effect of the Van Allen belts and the upper atmosphere in creating the blue-green marble that is earth.

To avoid cognitive impairment now and in the future, get started here.

3.01.2006

Is Web 2.0 just Web 1.0 on Botox? Yes or No
>

This is a burning question. Is there a new, new thing? VOTE

Wordz - a brain game
>

Here is a brain game for you to try.
please register, if you haven't, so we can notify you of new games.

You can also register by trying the sight speed test
here:


OR cognitive speed test here:



In both cases, see how you do down to the millisecond.

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